You think teams would learn by now: You screw with your uniform during a rivalry game and bad things can (and often do happen). The Ohio State University almost learned that lesson the hard way yesterday, narrowly escaping Columbus with a hard-fought, double-overtime victory over arch-rival Michigan. The team tempted fate by ditching their classic gray hats and instead opting for black/gray helmets they recycled from their Nebraska game, when they wore 1916 fauxbacks. They won that game 62-3, so maybe they figured it was OK to tempt the uni gods.

Other teams learned the hard way you need to wear your school colors in your rivalry game, sadly. Both North Carolina (going BFBS against NC State) and Arizona State University (wearing a gray/bronze combo — neither of which are school colors — playing Arizona) fell to their rivals in their final regular season games on Friday.

Obviously, alternates and pinktober and camopander and throwbacks etc. are a part of the college football uni landscape, and have been for a decade or more. But there should be one *sacred* rule: when you play your biggest rival…wear your regular uniform. You’ve got 12 other games to screw around and play dress-up. At least save your best uniform for your biggest game. Maybe a few more losses in big games will drive that point home. THE Ohio State University almost learned a valuable lesson.

Now that I’ve sent you all off my lawn, I’m gonna turn it over to TJ and your…

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Sunday Morning Uni WatchBy Terry Duroncelet, Jr.

Is it just me, *or* did this week go by simultaneously slowly and quickly? Must be the holidays. Anyway… Rivalry Week. The week that –throughout its history– has single-handedly spawned more fights than between people arguing whether or not pineapple is a worthy choice for a pizza topping. The week where school spirit is at its peak for many. The week that has gives us our annual rites: Michigan/Ohio State, Alabama/Auburn, USC/Notre Dame, Grambling/Southern (although I’ll admit I mainly watch that game for the bands), and plenty more that we all know and love (or loathe in some cases). This week tends to wield an ample amount of memorable moments (like every team from yesterday seemingly treating their respective games like basketball shootouts with video game scores), and from a uni-action standpoint, this year seems to be decently fruitful.

From Tuesday:

• Pretty much every Eastern Michigan home game that involves a decently-vibrant road team looks like a colorized black and white photo. Most certainly the case with Central Michigan wearing their yellow alts (more pics here).

• I think this might be one of the gloomiest uniforms that Arizona State has worn, if not the gloomiest, ‘specially for a team called, you know, the SUN DEVILS.

• In the mist of Charlie Strong, some may have missed that Bevo (all 15 editions of him) turns 100 this year, and Texas wore a decal for the occasion.

From Saturday:

• In the 120th edition of the Civil War between Oregon and Oregon State, the Beavers channeled their opponent and dressed for the occasion (those are the Men of Roses helmets previously worn against Washington State). The Ducks were actually dressed pretty conservatively by their standards.

• Florida State wore decals with ‘MB 42′ on them in honor of Monk Bonasorte, the Seminoles’ Senior Associate Director of Athletics, who recently passed away after battling brain cancer. 42 was his number during his playing days with Florida State.

• The (other) Game. Fun fact about this game: not only is this the first time that Michigan has played against Ohio State while signed with Nike since 2007 (and their first road game with swooshie since 2006), this is also the first time since 1974 (someone fact-check in case I completely goofed on this) that the Wolverines played against the Buckeyes in mono-white. It would’ve been a mirror-image matchup from 42 years ago… if THE had decided to look normal, but nooooo. No, they just HAD to wear the cannonball helmets “just to see how it looks”. Well, congrats, your greys are having a bigger argument than the golds that plagued the Saints prior to 2012. Also, Michigan QB Wilton Speight had a hand warmer sewn onto his jersey, and if you look here, you can see the outside of it seems to use the same mesh that the abdomen of the jersey is made of. Nonetheless, it was a thriller to behold, as we saw the first overtime in the history of this matchup, one that would ultimately see the Buckeyes pull one out in a nail-biter.

And that will do it for Week 13! What do next week’s championship games have in store for us? Probably not much, but we’ll just have to see. See you next week.

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Thanks, TJ! OK, now on to the rest of your SMUW…

NCAA Uni Tracking

Uni Watch will again track the uniform combinations worn by the “Power 5” conferences. Most of the 2015 trackers are back, with one new tracker added:

We’ve got Rex Henry (tracking the ACC), Dennis Bolt (tracking the PAC-12), Kyle Acker (tracking the Big XII), and Ethan Dimitroff (now tracking the B1G AND the SEC). Rex, Dennis, and Kyle and are all returning from 2015, and Ethan is new to the NCAA Uni Tracking this season. Ethan has stepped into the dual role (thanks, man!) of both the B1G and the SEC after one of my previous trackers could no longer provide the B1G.

Following in the footsteps of the original “5 & 1,” Jim Vilk, and Catherine Ryan after him, Joe Ringham is back for 2016 to make his “5 & 1” (five good looking and one stinker) uni-vs-uni matchups. Sometimes he’ll have some “honorable mentions” and sometimes there will be more than one “bad” game. You may agree and you may disagree — these are, after all, just opinions and everyone has one. Feel free to let him know what you think in the comments section.

Here’s Joe:

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Greetings, everyone! Rivalry Weekend has now come and gone, and it left us with some fine looking match-ups to look at. So, let’s go right to the list.

5) Oregon at Oregon State — The Ducks looked awesome in their green/white/green on the road for The Civil War, going with school colors instead of one of their seemingly infinite number of other color combos. This matched up excellently against the mono-black the Beavers went with at home in Corvallis.

4) Syracuse at Pittsburgh — The highest scoring game in regulation time in FBS history was an absolute beauty of a game, uni-wise. The Orange looked fantastic in orange/white/orange on the road, a combo they should always go with. Pittsburgh looked just as sharp at home in gold/navy/gold.

3) Kentucky at Louisville — Loved the bright contrast of this game. UK looked awesome in blue/white/blue on the road, probably their best looking road set. Paired up against the chrome red/red/white the Cardinals went with made for such a bright and bold contrast. It really did make the game pop and stand out as the two battled for the Governor’s Cup.

2) Florida at Florida State — A week after I put the Gators on the bad side of the list, they redeem themselves on their trip to Tallahassee. Loved the orange/white/orange they went with on the road, one they really should go with full-time. Add to that the usual gold/garnet/gold home set FSU went with, one that I think is always one of the best looking home uni’s in the college game, and you have one fine looking game.

1) Nebraska at Iowa — By far, the best looking game of the holiday weekend was Friday in Iowa City. Always have been a fan of Iowa’s home uniforms, as those who frequent this know. Pair it up against the Huskers classic white/white/red road set, and you can see why this was a sure-fire number 1.

Welcome to the 2016 Oregon Ducks Uni Tracker. This little project was originally begun way back in 2008-09 by Michael Princip, who retired after several seasons, whereupon the project was continued by Tim E. O’Brien. He, too, retired from the tracking, but the project has been ably kept up by the man who also tracks the Pac12, Dennis Bolt.

Here’s this week’s Uniform Combo for the Ducks (you can click to enlarge):

You can read about this uniform, and MUCH MORE, by checking out the Duck Tracker here!

This is the final weekend of the Duck Tracker (for 2016), as the Ducks season is now (mercifully) over and with a record of 4-8, even in this era of expanded bowl bids, the Webfoots will be home for the holidays.

I want to thank Dennis for continuing the Duck Tracking tradition here on Uni Watch. I haven’t decided whether it will return next year — in a way it’s superfluous with the PAC-12 Tracker (which Dennis also does) and with the Ducks now just one of several teams who wear different costumes each week. But we’ll cross that bridge next fall, when we come to it.

And that will do it for today. As always, big ups to and for the SMUW Crew — Paul thanked them for me on Thursday, but I want to again give props to a great set of dedicated guys: Terry “TJ” Duroncelet, Joe Ringham, Rex Henry, Kyle Acker, Dennis Bolt and Ethan Dimitroff. Great work again today, gents!

I’ll be back next Saturday (wow — it’ll be December then…2016 is. almost. over.) but until then you can …

“[Ohio State’s] black numbers by themselves wouldn’t be so bad, but the helmets, with the added black socks and undershirts, just really wreck the look. It’s BFBS without actually wearing a black jersey.”

Gonna be a (relatively) short post today — just the lede, one sub and ticker — but it’s a great one: Part III of Leo Strawn’s fantastic look-back at the unis and helmets of the Canadian Football League. Hope everyone in the lower 48 (and Alaska/Hawai’i) had a wonderful Thanksgiving and, if you’re one of those types — survived Black Friday.

Let’s get right to the good stuff. Here’s Leo with …

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Cool and Unusual Helmets and Uniforms from the Great White North…EastBy Leo Strawn, Jr.

As the CFL winds down toward the 104th Grey Cup, I will pick up where I left off, this time sharing some (I think) cool and (definitely) unusual Canadian Football uniforms from the eastern part of Canada.

I would be remiss if I did not mention Scott Grant of Ottawa, Ontario, whose photos have appeared in Leo’s World during the course of these Canadian football articles. Some of the older photos on his site are credited to Ted Grant, so it seems this is a tradition handed down through their family. In addition to looking for photos on image searches, I’ve poured through literally thousands of photos on Scott’s website, looking for references of old helmets and uniforms. His site is an interesting glimpse of CFL uniform history (and more specifically the Ottawa franchises, which we’ll get to shortly). You can check out (and order) his photos here. (If you do scour over them, be advised that not all of the names and years are 100% accurate, so you may have to do a bit of extra research for accuracy.)

Two weeks ago we began this journey north of the border, starting with a general overview in week one, then moving on to a more specific look at some helmets and uniforms from the western provinces last week.

Before checking out uniforms from the east, here’s a couple of updates from last week:

I wasn’t sure exactly what year the Roughriders changed from Regina wearing red and black to Saskatchewan wearing green and white because I was finding different answers on different sites. Wade Heidt offered this link regarding Saskatchewan history from the team’s website. It’s well worth the time it takes to read. (By the way, the answer is: 1948.)

Will S did some amazing research and posted in the comments regarding Calgary’s horseshoe helmets from 1960 and 1961 and another alternate Stampeders lid along with a BC alt helmet from 2003, none of which I had ever seen in any format other than graphic interpretations. Check out the photos and videos in last week’s comments by hitting the link for last week’s article. Thanks, Will!

As I noted previously, I’m essentially ignoring which franchise incarnation is which and just focusing on locations, but I will be mentioning a few more of the historical football clubs today. Also, as promised, the mono red uniforms for les Alouettes I ran across last week (too late to include in the first article) are in the section on Montréal! The last section of today’s piece features some preseason photos of CFL teams from the east and west.

Montréal: The largest city in Québec has also been home to several Canadian football clubs. The AAA Winged Wheelers became the first team outside of Ontario to win the Coupe Grey in the first game played for the Cup outside of Ontario, at Molson Stadium against the Regina Roughriders in 1931. (Not sure which team is which in that photo, sorry, but note the huge numbers on both teams’ jerseys.)

This has been a major effort, but researching all of this was also an awesome journey. Sometimes it’s fun to see just how far the rabbit hole goes, though I must admit for weeks now I’ve been having the same recurring nightmare consisting of moose and beavers eating back bacon smothered in maple syrup in a midst of a blizzard! Thankfully, Rush is always playing YYZ off in the distance…

Sadly, due to circumstances beyond my control, I have to make a change in my approach to Leo’s World. Maybe I’ll be able to continue next year in a (roughly) bi-weekly mode, or maybe it will just be every once in a while that I surprise Phil with an installment and let him post it if/when he wants. But, for now, I’ve got some big, time consuming, fish to fry before I can get back to enjoying life. The quicker I can steamroll obstacles, the quicker I can get back to having spare time to devote to things in my life that I take part in purely for the fun of it…like Leo’s World. Hopefully I’ll at least be able to produce a Leo’s World or two later in the winter. We’ll see what the new year brings.

So, since I probably won’t have a Leo’s World to share in December, let me take the time now to wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season!

That’s all for now, though. Hope you enjoyed!

Till next time…

Cheers!

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Thanks, Leo — and thanks for all you’ve contributed to the blog over the past several months. Leo’s explained (kinda) his circumstances to me in private, and all I can say is let’s all hope everything works out OK. After Paul’s heartfelt piece this past Thanksgiving, and now hearing of Leo’s obstacles, I think we can all safely say we’ll be glad when 2016 is over. My best to you and yours Leo, and let’s all hope you’re back sooner rather than later!

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Pittsburgh Penguins Go For The Gold

Yesterday, in a somewhat surprising move, the Pittsburgh Penguins had their 2017 Stadium Series jerseys (they’ll play the Philadelphia Flyers on February 25th at Heinz Field) revealed. They’re pretty gold.

Check out the screengrabs from NBC (who revealed the unis yesterday — you can click to enlarge):

As you can see, the Pens use the gold color they had from 1981-84, but the skating penguin is not inside of a triangle for this incarnation (maybe because they want the logo to be visible from the cheap seats?). Or maybe it’s just to sell more jerseys, I’m not sure.

Instead, they take the triangle and (in this example) use it for the “C” (Crosby’s jersey was shown).

I’m guessing the “A” jersey(s) will follow suit. Pretty nice. You can sorta see there’s a keystone logo on the left sleeve…

Let’s look at the sleeve:

Nice — inside the keystone (Pennsylvania is the “Keystone State,” if you weren’t already aware) is the logo “City of Champions” (how original) — [edit: Pittsburgh was the first city to use this nickname in relation to sports, but it’s not the only city to use the term] and 4 stars, signifying the four Stanley Cups the Penguins have won.

The triangle is replicated in the keystone, by two crossed hockey sticks, which is also a neat design feature.

So far so good. Unfortunately, we still need to see the back (which is apparently shown here).

Ugh. Why do teams constantly fall back on the faux-military font-tripe these numbers have? You want them visible from a distance, so in this regard, they’re good — but there’s not need to use this particular font-style. A simple block would have been more than sufficient. I can’t imagine this would be a selling point (or a deal-breaker, for that matter), but it seems a wee-bit overdone. And the color, style, and front/side of the jersey were so nice. The NOB also appears to be done in military font as well.

Not bad overall. I love the Penguins in gold — perhaps this will become an new alternate once the Stadium Series is complete — and let’s hope if so, they’ll wear it as their LIGHT sweater against opposing dark sweaters.

Baseball News: With the sad passing of Carol Brady Florence Henderson late Thursday night, here’s a photo of most of the Brady Bunch stars (where are Greg and Mike???) in Hollywood Stars uniforms, in 1973 (from Bruce Menard). I also see Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, but who’s the kid in the blue turtleneck (Bruce thinks it might be Florence’s real life son)? … Check out this awesome “vintage” Philadelphia A’s shirt. Says Berserker, “I found an awesome sweatshirt while cleaning. Don’t care it doesn’t fit.”

Hockey News: The Fort Wayne Komets, an ECHL team, wore military themed sweaters on Thursday evening (from Jeff Tasca). … “It’s well known that NHL teams have a special ‘trophy’ that whomever played the best receives that night. After the next game – that player chooses who they thought earned the trophy that night,” says Dustin Semore. “Most of the ‘Path the Winter Classic’ seasons on HBO shows us what each team has. The Captials have an Abe Lincoln beard and hat. The Rangers have a broadway fedora. Watching the Nashville Predators’ ‘Beneath the Ice’ showed that the player-given trophy is a large chain necklace fastened with a large rusty lock. No clue behind the reasoning. But it’s a fun insight to what the players “play for” each night.

Rare sight yesterday in Dallas, as the Cowboys wore blue at home against Washington. This has become something of a Turkey Day tradition for the Cowboys: They also wore the blue jerseys on Thanksgiving in 2014 and 2013, plus they’ve also worn blue Thanksgiving throwbacks at various points over the years.

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Terry Proctor, 1947-2016: Got some sad news on Wednesday, as word came down that longtime Uni Watch reader and sporting goods maven Terry Proctor had passed away. I knew he’d had some heart trouble in the past but hadn’t realized he’d recently taken a turn for the worse. His loss is a huge blow to the uni-verse, as he had a vast knowledge of old-school uniforms that simply cannot be replaced.

Terry was retired but had spent many years working at Ruby’s Sporting Goods in Rochester, where he helped outfit the area’s many minor league, high school, college, and recreational teams. Nothing made him happier than talking about his days at Ruby’s, and he could usually remember exactly which color, fabric, and uniform style a given team had worn in a given year. A few years back I came across a small batch of old Ruby’s labels and sent some of them to Terry. He really liked that.

Terry loved it when I wrote about old sporting goods catalogs. At one point I wrote about a late-1960s Russell Athletic catalog that I had scored on eBay, and Terry wrote to tell me that he remembered filling orders from a copy of that same catalog. He said he was crying as he was writing the email and asked if I would consider giving the catalog to him, which I happily did. I hope it gave him some pleasure.

Terry had some quirks that made him, well, Terry. When referring to colors, he always capitalized them. When referring to Ruby’s, he always spelled out the full name — Ruby’s Sporting Goods. He could also be crotchety, which I never minded. He’d earned the right.

I never met Terry in person, which I regret. He knew more about uniforms than I ever will, and I’m sorry I won’t get to learn from him anymore. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and friendship, Terry. RIP.

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The TickerBy Paul

’Skins Watch: The American Sociological Association has sent a letter to MLB commish Rob Manfred, telling him that it’s time for Chief Wahoo to get the heave-ho (thanks, Phil). … A Canadian man wants the town of Mississauga to cut funding for five local hockey teams with Native-inspired names and mascots (from Ted Arnold). … Pretty odd that an Icelandic restaurant in Berlin would have a Chief Wahoo sign out front . “I inquired inside and the staff said it was an ‘art’ piece purchased by the owner of the restaurant company,” says Matt Wolfram. “So then I checked with the restaurant’s ownership, and they said it was done by an artist name Cyprien Gaillard. Wahoo is apparently a common motif for him.” … California’s last school to use the name “Redskins” for its sports teams will change the name on Jan. 1.

Hockey News: Big news out of L.A., where L.A. Times sports columnist Helene Elliott is reporting that the Kings will wear Burger King throwbacks on Jan. 14 (from GKG_77). … Wait, an update on that Kings item, from reader/commenter Brian Rowland: “Per LA Kings Insider Jon Rosen, the Kings will only wear the Burger King throwbacks during warmups on January 14th, after which they will be auctioned off.” … The Wild wore pregame jerseys on Wednesday to benefit a wildlife conservation group. … Albany River Rats throwbacks on Saturday for the Albany Devils (from Jason Lewis).

Soccer News: Asheville City FC has introduced a replica jersey that’s designed to function as a season ticket (from The Boot Room). … The logo for the four Euro2020 games taking place in Dublin (from Charlie Kranz).

Last Saturday the Tugboat Captain and I took what will probably be our final walk in the surf for 2016. The water, which has been getting colder by the week, was barely bearable. It’s possible that we’ll go to the beach again at some point this winter, but I’m pretty sure we’ll keep our shoes on.

These surf walks have been great. In addition to posting photos of them here on Uni Watch, I’ve also shared pics on Facebook, and many of my friends have responded by saying something along the lines of, “Wow, you guys look so happy. Glad everything’s going so well for you!” Maybe some of you have thought the same thing.

The reality is a bit more complicated. Although the surf walks were part of my “Best Summer Ever” mantra, this summer — and, really, much of this year — has not been the best. Among other things: I had a serious medical scare that resulted in surgery; I have a separate ongoing medical issue that has made me feel like I’m at war with much of my own body, and has resisted everything my doctors have thrown at it; I’ve been having major sleep difficulties that have made me feel sluggish during the day and exhausted at night (and have no doubt contributed to the rising number of typos and coding errors on the site lately, ugh); my brother had a stroke; one of my cats had an ongoing medical issue of his own; several people close to me or to the cultural scene where I spend most of my social time passed away; two of my closest friends endured a personal crisis that is now threatening their marriage; the industry I work in has continued its steady death spiral, which is troubling on many levels and has also stymied some creative projects I had hoped to launch; I recently got word that my rent will be increasing by 10%, my health insurance premiums will be increasing by 20%, and my car will soon need repairs that are so expensive that it’ll actually make more sense to just buy a new car; just yesterday I received word that a member of the Uni Watch community had passed away (I’ll have more to say about that tomorrow); the presidential campaign and its aftermath seemed to bring out the worst in a tremendous number of people, which I continue to find incredibly depressing; and, worst of all, my wonderful girlfriend endured a series of work- and housing-related troubles that have made her year and even her future — and therefore our year and our future — very problematic.

I realize that much of this is just the regular up-and-down cycle of life. I also realize there are many people out there — probably including some of you who are reading this — who are going through much rougher times than anything I’ve experienced. I don’t mean to dismiss or be insensitive to anyone else’s troubles, and I certainly don’t mean to sound self-pitying. I’m just saying that a lot of this year has felt like it’s been more uphill than usual — not just for me, but for many of the people and things I love. The walks in the surf have been little oases of bliss within that turmoil, small junctures where the uphill climb leveled out for a few minutes, my troubles melted away, and I could just enjoy the earthy intersection of water, sand, and foot. I’ll miss doing that, at least until spring rolls around.

All of which is a lengthy way of saying that Thanksgiving couldn’t have come at a better time, because it helps put things in perspective. So: I’m thankful that my brother, my cat, and I all came through our respective medical scares relatively okay. I’m thankful that my 92-year-old mom had no medical scares this year at all, and seems like she might actually be the healthiest member of the family at the moment. I’m thankful that while my industry may be in turmoil, I still have a good job, at least for now. I’m thankful that I was able to launch two new creative projects this year — Gromm•It and Key Ring Chronicles. I’m thankful that my favorite team, the team I live and die with, made it to the playoffs. I’m thankful that curling season has started up again, and that my team is playing well. I’m thankful to have so many amazing friends, and that we’re always there for each other during difficult times. I’m thankful that my wonderful girlfriend and I still have each other.

Finally, my thanks to all of you for visiting the site, for contributing content, and for putting up with my occasional (okay, maybe not-so-occasional) rants, ups and downs, indulgences, and so on.

If you’re traveling today, be safe. If you’re working today, please accept my thanks for keeping the world spinning while the rest of us have the day off. Me, I’ll be driving out to Long Island to spend the day with my family. However you’re spending your day, I hope it turns out to be a good one. Peace. — Paul